During the past 100 years, experts have suggested never playing with babies or hugging and kissing children.
Not right, said Education Prof. Greg Duncan. His advice is to relax and read Dr. Spock, or maybe “From Neurons to Neighborhoods.”
On Monday, Duncan presented “From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development,” as part of Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research fall lecture series.
Duncan, a faculty fellow at the institute, served on the National Research Council’s Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development. The lecture at 617 Library Place highlighted the findings of the committee, recently released in a book of the same title.
The committee was charged with “evaluating and integrating” scientific research on child development, Duncan said, and to examine how public policy could positively reflect the research. The committee found that recent emphasis on critical periods for development may be misleading and that more research is needed to produce policy-relevant evidence.
“I think it’s one of the most important studies that’s come out in this area,” said Fay Cook, director of the institute. “It pulls together what we know in this area so it can be useful to policy.”
Recent observational studies and media articles have touted the importance of “critical periods,” times when children are sensitive to their environments and must learn certain abilities. Duncan, however, pointed out skeptical evidence of some of these studies and said that “windows don’t slam shut.”
According to Duncan, although there may be critical periods of development, later intervention has also proven successful. He would expand the critical period from the commonly accepted zero to 3 years. Prenatal care and intervention for school-age children are essential, he said.
Also, neuroscience isn’t close to having definitive evidence that can be translated into public policy, Duncan said. Studies concerning childhood development often prove inconclusive because children produce at dramatically different rates in early childhood, he said.
Studies also have failed to show the correlation between the expenses and benefits of early-intervention programs. It is unclear whether children’s educational gains are proportional to the money spent or if a certain amount of money must be spent before children benefit, Duncan said.
“That’s the kind of knowledge we need to have,” Duncan said. “And that’s the kind of knowledge we don’t have.”
Despite the lack of evidence supporting specific public policies, Duncan provided a clearer view of how parents can help their children. His presentation focused on eight “take-home messages for parents.” They included helping a preschool-age child grow emotionally as well as cognitively, providing each child with at least one “loving and consistent adult” and minimizing influences that harm children such as poverty, violence and inconsistency.
Business and government also can help parents regardless of definitive evidence, Duncan said. He suggested businesses create work environments conducive to early parenting and suggests the government help ease poverty and create child-care standards.
“There’s almost a continual kind of interaction between genetic endowment and the environments children are exposed to,” Duncan said.
He also shared his bottom lines for parents: Avoid prenatal dangers, attend to the needs of very young children and “take heart in children’s ability to thrive under bewilderingly diverse parental practices around the globe.”
